It was a way out of adverse situations, the death of mom, dad, marriage , dreams , death of ideas of self , death of friends , death of relationships , the valleys of life added up to a lot of miles of escape. Five shovelheads now and a flathead, how much longer who knows the kidneys shit the bed on the rigid frames, I got like 150 miles of riding in over the last 2 years … the woods are burning.  I was the new guy late in 86 made my bones on a swingarm shovel running with the fast central jersey crowd.  No fashion art or the internet- straight feral living, by 1991 I had to act like a grown up in my mind and sold the basket case cone to Deal in Wheels in Rahway.  These years dark, dark as they could get, mom died of cancer at home, she was 47 and I was 22;  that bike burned, it burned like a the glow of the refinery just up the great route 1, the bike burned down on rt 1 –  in Rahway it was late 1990, September, my fiancé’ at the time said the words:  “ I hope that thing burns”  – before I left.  I had just repaired it after throwing a chain on the Verrazano Bridge a few days earlier, had to push it to Dyker Heights and go find a new chain and all the jollies and joys of breaking down.  What happened after that? On the way home on the overpass in front of the Kings Inn back in Rahway, fire that’s what… as I headed home from Brooklyn that HD chapter came to an end and so did that engagement, it was midnight and the tow truck chained the burnt bird to the tow hitch and that was it, a fitting end I guess because I bought that bike from a tow truck operator in New Brunswick.